


Never Say Die

by 10milestereo



Category: Fear the Walking Dead (TV), The 100 (TV)
Genre: Clexa, F/F, Inspired by The Walking Dead, One Shot, Queer the walking dead - Freeform, Zombie Apocalypse, lexark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-31
Updated: 2016-03-31
Packaged: 2018-05-30 05:40:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6411025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/10milestereo/pseuds/10milestereo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Elyza Lex and Alicia Clark meet at the end of the world. Flirting ensues. Is there hope for the future?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never Say Die

**Author's Note:**

> I resisted until I could resist no more. Call me trash if you must. I am all in with Elyza Lex, and I don't even care. This fandom is so giving, creative, and incredible. Thank you to the other fan fiction writers who put themselves out there and post their stories and bring a little bit of comfort to all of us.

 

 

The bright future that Alicia Clark had mapped out for herself had taken a complete detour.  She used to spend the majority of her time studying, tolerating her family, and hanging out with her boyfriend, but those activities had been replaced with securing shelter, scavenging for food, and bashing in the heads of the infected.  She was on her own now and had been for a while.  She had foolishly decided to go on a supply run by herself, thinking she could handle a few walkers, but she realized the real threat was other human beings.  The end of the world brought out both the best and the worst in people. 

Alicia had been taken by a group of raiders and brought to their camp at a junkyard.  She could speak fluent Spanish, solve a complicated calculus problem, and write an insightful essay with perfect grammar, but she was ashamed to admit that she had started out as a dumb teenage girl when it came to this new way of life, so naïve, so scared, so confused, like the dumb teenage girl in a slasher movie who fucking trips and falls over nothing while the masked-killer is hot on her trail.  She had felt helpless while in captivity, too afraid to attempt an escape and test their violent threats because she trusted they would follow through with them.  Hopelessness was the only thing more dangerous than savage men and the walking dead.  She tried to remain strong and positive and wished for a miraculous opportunity and then one day, it actually happened.   A horde of the infected had descended upon the junkyard, constant weight and pressure on the chain link fence revealing structural weakness and vulnerable openings.  It was instant chaos as the walkers poured through camp, like a swarm of ants on a sticky, melted, day-old popsicle that had been dropped on a sidewalk.  A raider had initially dragged her along with him, but he was taken by surprise and torn apart as they made their way to an exit point.  Alicia picked a direction and bolted, not knowing where she was or where she was going, just knowing she had to avoid trouble and anything that wanted to devour her flesh.

The dumb teenage girl in her eventually wised up.  She learned to be more confident, to embrace her fear, to swing hard and to swing through to make it count with her aluminum baseball bat, a fortunate find at a thrift store.  She was definitely not the terrified high school student anymore, but her heart still pounded out of her chest; her elegant hands still shook; and her long legs still felt like jelly whenever she encountered one of the infected or heard a strange noise cut through deafening silence.  She struggled with loneliness, not feeling connected to anyone or anything; the lack of luxuries she took for granted like electricity, running water, and music to fill her ears; and the constant need to be on alert and totally aware.  She had endless moments to herself, but there was never a second to just relax and breathe. 

Nighttime was the worst time.  Alicia thought of her mom and Nick and hoped they were safe and sound.  She wondered if they ever tried to find her.  She wondered if they ever gave up and assumed she was not strong enough to make it.  She was alive though, alive and just surviving.  She was suddenly reminded of a quote that played in her head like a distant memory, ‘Maybe life should be about more than just surviving,’ but she had no idea who had said it or where it had come from.

 

* * *

 

A walker shuffled down the middle of the road, breathing a death rattle, wet and gurgling, and mumbling unintelligible nothings.  It stopped and stumbled over its own feet to turn around.  It was greeted with the sharp, serrated blade of a hunting knife to the side of its rotted head and then collapsed to the macadam.  Elyza Lex kneeled down and wiped the blade of her weapon on the back of the dead – the _extra_ dead walker.  She stood up and put her knife back in the sheath attached to her belt and then took a look around.  The town was mostly made up of small, independent businesses.  A number of storefront windows had been shattered or completely smashed.  There was a lot of graffiti on the buildings too and quite a few of those ‘neighborhood watch’ signs.  She had a feeling the community was not exactly thriving before the apocalypse. 

Elyza continued to walk and came across a gas station and garage.  The two gas pumps out front were outdated and mechanical with scrolling dials.  She approached large, cracked, splintered windows and peered in.  She could make out a front counter and two vending machines tucked in the corner of the room.  She pulled the handle of the door and found it locked.  She did the next logical thing and knocked on the glass, but when she did, a small section crumbled and fell apart to the floor in a melody of clinks.  Elyza reached her hand through the opening and unlocked the door.  She pulled out her shotgun and entered the gas station.  “Hello?”  Nothing.  “Hello?”  Nothing again.  She went over to the vending machines.  The one with the snacks and candy bars was visibly empty.  She peeked inside the other with soda and bottled water and came up disappointed there too.  “Damn.”  Elyza turned around and reflexively raised her shotgun as she looked upon an absolute knockout, a gorgeous creature with soft, striking green eyes and long, brunette hair, ready to swing a Louisville Slugger in her direction.  She put on her best charming smile and lowered her firearm.  “Of all the gas stations in all the towns in all the world, I walk into yours.”

“What?  What the hell does that mean?”  Alicia slightly relaxed her arms and let her bat rest against her shoulder.  She remained perplexed as she checked out the stranger – her radiant blue eyes; her face marked with several cuts and scrapes; her wavy, blonde hair full of body; and her body clad in a black leather jacket, a white, stained v-neck t-shirt, and tight black jeans. 

“You’re staring, sweetheart.”

“I’m waiting for you to answer my question – and my name’s not ‘sweetheart,’ by the way.”

“Is it not self-explanatory?  It means you’re bloody gorgeous, and I am one lucky bastard to have found you.”  Elyza flashed another smile.  She watched the beautiful stranger roll her eyes and took in the rest of her sharp features, the strong jaw line, the defined cheekbones, and she swore she had seen her face before.  Perhaps in a sweet dream, a sexual fantasy, or maybe…  “Wait a minute, I think I know you.  You ever spend any time at Jackhammer?” 

“’Jackhammer’?  What is that?”

Elyza set her shotgun and duffle bag down on the counter.  “Yeah, Jackhammer, it’s the biker bar at Burbank and Cahunega.”  Confusion mixed with annoyance continued to stare back at her.  Elyza crossed her arms and then shook her head.  “Nah, not you, I wouldn’t forget a looker like you.”      

“Whatever.”  Alicia liked the raspy Australian accent, but as much as she craved company and conversation, she wasn’t sure if she could tolerate the overconfident personality and the constant come-ons for an extended period of time – or even five more minutes. 

“My name’s Elyza Lex.”

“Okay.  That sounds fake, but okay.” 

“What’s yours?”

“Alicia Clark.”

“What’s your last name?”

“Clark.”

“Say that again.”

“Clark.”

“One more time?”

“No.  What is your damage?”

“I just especially like the way that word sounds coming out your pretty mouth.”  Elyza extended her hand out to Alicia, and the brunette grasped her forearm and gave it a squeeze instead of going for a traditional handshake.  “Is this some weird American custom?”  The more she thought about it, the more there was something familiar in the touch, in the gesture. 

“Oh, I don’t know.  I don’t know why I just did that.”  Alicia retracted her hand in a hurry, but the light blush had already spread across her cheeks.  She cleared her throat and averted her gaze to the dirty, tile floor under her high-top sneakers.  “So, do you have people somewhere, or are you out here on your own?”

“Oh, I’m a lone wanderer.”  Elyza cycled through the names and faces of people she had encountered since the outbreak and the destruction of Los Angeles.  It was a long list of casualties.  “I ran with a group for a bit, even had a settlement to call home, but we didn’t have the guns or muscle to hold onto it.  I decided to go solo, thought I would have a better chance to fend for myself.  What about you?  You got family waiting for you, a boyfriend, maybe a girlfriend?”

Alicia looked up and shot a glare at Elyza.  “No.” 

“Cool, cool.”  Elyza smiled a slight smile, her low-key, graceful way of doing a fist pump.  She unzipped her duffle bag and grabbed a bottle of water.  She took a big gulp and then another until a quarter of it had disappeared.  She handed it to Alicia, and the young woman reluctantly accepted her offering.  “You can trust me, you know?  How about you and me drop the lone wolf acts and spend the rest of the end of the world together?”

The sudden sincerity in those sparkling blue eyes caused her throat to tighten.  Alicia took a second sip of water and then crunched the bottle in her hands as she considered it.  Elyza was the first person to come along in months who seemed friendly and harmless enough – maybe too friendly.  She appeared tough and capable, like she knew what she was doing, like she knew how to survive and then some.  “Okay.”  Alicia paused.  “But I don’t want to give you the wrong idea.”

“What’d you mean by that?”

“I mean, you can make your little comments, but nothing is going to happen between us.”

Elyza nodded her head.  “I understand, princess.”  She approached Alicia, took the water bottle from her hands, and leaned in close toward her ear.  “I like a good chase and a slow burn too.”  Alicia swallowed, and her brilliant green eyes focused on the smirk tugging at the corner of the mouth in front of her.  “What do you say you give me a tour and show me around?”  Elyza grabbed her shotgun and swung the duffle bag over her shoulder.

Alicia motioned to the lobby they were currently in.  “There’s this.”  She approached the metal door to their left, slid a key in the knob, and opened it to reveal the small garage.  “And there’s this.”  An unrepaired station wagon was situated on an antiquated lift on the floor; its rear door was opened and showed an unmade, makeshift bed made out of blankets.  Unlit candles were placed around the room.  There was a wooden peg board on the wall that was bare save for a heavy wrench, a pair of pliers, and a few screwdrivers.  There was a red tool chest with some of its drawers pulled out and spilled out.  On the table, in the back, were several crates full of food, water, and various supplies. 

Elyza walked over to the large, metal garage door and yanked on it hard to test how secure it was; it rose several inches, but sturdy rope attached to its handle was connected to the auto lift, preventing it from going up any higher.  Alicia had a fairly solid setup.  She turned and looked back at the brunette.  She was more than impressed with what she had stumbled upon.  “Not bad.  Not bad at all.  How long you been here?”

“Two weeks.” 

“Ever run into any trouble?”

“Not here.  Not yet.”

Elyza gave her a knowing bob of her head.  Danger was inevitable.  People had become the bottom of the food chain.  Human survivors targeted other human survivors for their wealth, their safety, their last bit of comfort in this fucking wasteland.  She moved in front of Alicia and peeked into the lobby for a second.  She had gotten used to checking, double checking, and triple checking her surroundings.  “Ever had to use that bat on someone other than a walker?”

“No.  Not yet.”  Alicia stepped away from the door, and Elyza caught it with her hand and then followed her to the lobby.  The door shut and locked automatically behind her.  Alicia sat in one of the beat-up chairs, and the Australian rogue joined her in the other.  “What about you and that shotgun?” 

Elyza gazed down at the pump-action weapon in her hands.  For the first time since Alicia met her, she saw a serious expression cloud over her easygoing demeanor.  “Yeah.  I’ve had my share of bad luck.”  She cleared her throat with a grunt.  “But don’t you worry, gorgeous.  Anyone tries to fuck with us, I won’t hesitate to blow’em away.”

Alicia gave her a weak smile in an effort to quiet the memories of her past.  She turned to the large, fractured window behind her and watched the beautiful sky.  Peach faded to pink and then to lavender as the sun dipped below the horizon.  The sun was almost down, and it would soon be dark.  For the first time since she became separated from her family, she felt safe and would not endure a lonely night. 

* * *

The back of the station wagon was plenty big enough to accommodate both young women.  Alicia pressed herself as close as she could to the side of the vehicle to maintain adequate space between them, but she still felt Elyza occasionally, ‘accidentally’ brush her foot or her leg against her ass as she continued to stay up and read a collection of fables via flashlight.  She lay awake and listened to the Australian stranger and her breathy sighs, the ponderous ‘hmms,’ and the amused chuckles that escaped from her lips.  These little noises would probably irritate the shit out of anyone else trying to sleep, but Alicia couldn’t fight the smile that grew at her mouth. 

Elyza set her book down after a while.  She rolled over, propped herself up on her elbow, and looked down at Alicia, her long hair pulled to the side, her long neck exposed.  She nuzzled up to the young woman and draped an arm around her midriff. 

It lasted a split second before Alicia bristled at the contact and sat up in a flash.  “What the hell are you doing?  There is an imaginary line here, right here.”  She gestured to the gap between their bodies.  “Go to sleep.  Stay on your side.  Leave me alone.”

Elyza quirked her eyebrows and tried to stifle her broad grin.  She was already a sucker for this frustrated, beautiful young woman.  “Alicia, sweetheart, when was the last time you were touched properly?”  Alicia scoffed and then flicked her gaze up to meet cool, expectant blue eyes.  She swallowed hard and cast her stare to her covered feet under the blanket.  Elyza’s mouth went agape as she realized the silence was her answer to the question.  “Oh, come on, you’re just takin’ the piss out of me.  Never?” 

“Jesus, close your mouth and knock if off with the bug eyes.”  Alicia sighed and sucked on her bottom lip.  She had loved her boyfriend, Matt, enjoyed a chaste relationship with him and had every intention to keep it going once she went off to Berkeley.  The day they were to meet at the beach after school, she had planned on giving herself to him for the first time.  It had been too late by the time she found him at home; he was dying right in front of her, and she had no idea.  She tried not to think about the depressing reality of the future too much.  In this new world, there was no college, no successful career.  There was no epic road trip across the country, no backpacking adventure through Brazil. There was no extraordinary love of her life, no happy ever after.       

“All right, I’m sorry.  Tell me you touch yourself at least.  Tell me in great detail if you like.”  Eliza had that cocky smirk on her face again.  She liked it when Alicia rolled her eyes and shook her head with a hint of a smile.  She had a feeling they both enjoyed their dynamic.  Elyza tentatively moved her hand over to Alicia’s forearm, eased it to its side, and noticed the crude heart tattoo on pale skin.  She smoothed her thumb over black ink.  “You know, I know we only met twelve hours ago, but I feel like I’ve known you twelve lifetimes.” 

Alicia tried not to savor the warm touch, tried and failed.  This was a foreign concept to her, intimacy, real intimacy, simultaneously safe and risky.  She spotted a tattoo on the inside of Elyza’s wrist, a broken figure eight – or infinity symbol.  It was definitely an infinity symbol.  “I’m sure you say that to all the girls you meet in the apocalypse.”

“Nah, just the ones with heart tattoos and baseball bats.”

 

Everything went to shit four days later.

 

The shotgun blast was a deep and powerful boom.  Sleeping green eyes snapped opened, and Alicia sat up in a hurry and immediately glanced over to her side.  She expected to see Elyza with a conceited grin on her face, expected to hear some kind of ‘good morning’ coupled with a sexist term of endearment, expected to feel a soothing caress through her hair, but the Australian was not in her usual spot, not right next to her where she should be.  Alicia swallowed hard and frantically climbed out of the station wagon.  There was another heavy bang and then another.  The shots were getting closer, so much closer that she could just make out the unmistakable cocking of the shotgun.  She grabbed her baseball bat, rushed to the door, and threw it open.  She was instantly confronted with a decayed face and snarling jaws.  She swiftly baited the walker into the garage to get it out of the doorway and did not hesitate to repeatedly introduce her aluminum club to its head until there was a mess of hair, blood, and squished brains on the floor.  Alicia went to the lobby and ran out the glass door.  She spotted Elyza and the sizeable mob of walkers that wanted to take a bite out of her.

Elyza pulled a shell out of the pocket of her black leather jacket and slipped it into the shotgun as she walked backward toward the gas station.  She dug out four more shells, one at a time, and pushed them up into the loading flap.  She pumped the fore-end back and then forward, aimed, and hit a walker square in the head at close range, an explosion of bone and tissue.  Elyza felt a rough tug on her leather jacket and turned around to see Alicia with a bloody bat and splatters of crimson on her blue flannel shirt.  She smiled proudly and pumped her shotgun again.  “Good morning, sweetheart.  Look what followed me home.”  Elyza faced the small horde, fired, and took out one more of the infected before she and Alicia headed back inside the gas station to the safety of the garage. 

“What the fuck, Elyza?” 

Elyza hopped up on the hood of the station wagon and set her duffle bag down against the windshield. She took note of the gory scene and the lifeless body on the floor.  “Good on ya.”  She glanced up and looked at Alicia standing in front of her.  Her green eyes were unforgiving, and her ears and cheeks were flushed pink.  Oh, she was pissed off, but she was so fucking attractive.  “Good God, girl, you are sexy when you’re angry.” 

Alicia remained stern and crossed her arms.  “Why did you just take off like that?  Why didn’t you wake me up and ask me to come with you?  I would go anywhere with you.  I thought we were in this thing together.”  She felt the sting of unexpected tears hit her as she realized how much she had come to care for and depend on Elyza in a matter of days.  The idea of losing her was more terrifying than the living dead.  “The truth is, if I’m totally honest about it, I don’t know what I would do without you.”

Eliza smiled, nothing extra, just a genuine smile.  It was beautiful to watch the wall of stoicism crumble a bit.  “I don’t know what I would do without you either.”  She dragged her duffle bag onto her lap and unzipped it.  She pulled out a boombox, retro and silver, and presented it to Alicia.  “I needed to get some air, so I went for a walk, ransacked a house along the way, and found this.”  The brunette fondly examined the portable device in her hands.  “Found these too.”  She dug around in her bag and removed a stack of cassette tapes.  “TLC, Pearl Jam, Janet Jackson, Depeche Mode.  Got some batteries from the Super-Duper Mart in here too.  Somewhere.” 

“You went through all that trouble just to get me some music?  You stupid son-of-a-bitch.”  Alicia stepped closer and cupped a hand to Elyza’s cheek and then kissed the other one with a lingering press of pillow-soft lips.

“But I’m a sweet, stupid son-of-a-bitch, right?”   

* * *

The white noise of groans and grumbles and the never-ending knocks and bangs against the door was driving Alicia fucking crazy.  Twenty-four hours had gone by without a wink of sleep.  She sat up in the back of the station wagon and massaged her forehead as she felt a trace of a headache coming on.  Elyza climbed in next to her with a granola bar and extended her arm across the backseat, giving Alicia a comforting rub on her shoulder.  “We have to leave.” 

Elyza took a bite of her breakfast and nodded her head matter-of-factly.  “Yeah.  Those walkers aren’t gettin’ in, but we won’t be gettin’ out if we wait much longer.  You’d think they’d just give up after a while.  Wankers must be hard-up for a tasty meal.”

“I think you may have met your match.  They’re more persistent than you are.”  Alicia gave the Australian a playful look and a slight smile.  Blue eyes were instantly amused and drawn to full lips that she thought about kissing like her life depended on it.  “We should go.”

“What, right now, after you shamelessly flirt with me?”

“Are you always this delusional?”

“Are you always this masochistic?”

Alicia rolled her eyes and crawled out of the station wagon and then picked up her backpack.  She started filling it with the essentials:  the boombox, the batteries, and the cassettes tapes.  She grabbed a bar of soap, a stick of deodorant, a bottle of ibuprofen, a box of band-aids, and the rest of her tampons.  “Do you have room in your bag for water and snacks?”

“I’ll make room.”  Elyza exited the station wagon.  She watched Alicia struggle to close the zipper on her bag and wondered how she could make a mundane task look so cute and adorable.  She walked over to the door that led to the lobby and put her ear against cool metal to hear a collection of mindless, jumbled murmurs.  It was impossible to tell how many walkers had congregated there.  Elyza moved to the garage door and lowered herself to the floor.  She pulled on the handle, and her narrow view consisted of many pairs of feet, some covered in shoes, some bare and gray-skinned with exposed bone and missing toes.  “Fuck me.”  Elyza got to her feet and suddenly wished she could roll a cigarette and have a smoke.  She started to think for the worse while she had the best right in front of her.  Her stare was glued to Alicia again, and she found concern gazing back.

“Hey.”  Alicia approached Elyza and placed her hands on her shoulders.  “What’s wrong?”  She searched dreary blue eyes and found fear and uncertainty in them.  “It’s okay.  You’re okay.”  Alicia put her arms around Elyza in a tight embrace.  She felt tentative hands rub her back but then after a while, they bravely slipped under her shirt to caress bare skin.  Her lips rested at her neck, and Alicia pressed feathery kisses at her pulse point.  Heavy breathing filled both of their ears as chaste touches produced unchaste results. 

Elyza brought a hand to her neck and traced her thumb along her jaw line as their foreheads rested against each other.  She wanted to keep this moment for forever, to memorize the feel of soft skin, the smell of cucumber and green tea and watermelon Jolly Rancher, the heavy ache in her heart, the satisfying throb between her legs. 

Blue eyes suddenly popped open.  “Alicia.  You are a goddamn genius, you know that?”  Elyza slowly pulled away and observed the puzzled expression on the brunette’s face.  “Come here.  It’s not going to be pretty, but you just saved our lives.”  She took out her hunting knife and approached the deader than dead corpse on the floor.  She cut down its shirt, exposing its chest, and then forcefully stabbed her knife into rotted flesh to rip it open from sternum to bellybutton.    

* * *

Elyza and Alicia stood in front of the garage door and stared at each other – leather jacket, flannel shirt, and their jeans saturated in globs of flesh, blood, and entrails.  Two inches of metal separated them from the living dead.  This was the point of no return, the edge of the end of the world.  It was time to find out what was waiting for them on the other side. 

Elyza bent down and put the serrated blade of her knife against the rope and started to saw through it.  She purposely kept her movements slow and lazy.  She wanted every last drop of time that she could have with Alicia.  They had spent five days together, and she wanted five more decades with her – and even that wouldn’t be long enough.  Elyza cut through the last bit of nylon and grabbed onto the handle. 

Alicia joined her on the floor and halted her arm from opening the garage door.  She used to believe that there was nothing but a bleak, empty future to look forward to, just inevitable death and disease, but then Elyza walked into her life and set her heart on fire.  They stared at each other again, silent promises and declarations in their eyes, and they said nothing because nothing needed to be said. 

Elyza reached her hand out and grabbed the front of her stained flannel shirt.  Alicia wet her bee-stung lips with a gentle lick of her tongue and then felt a warm mouth on her own, stealing soft, urgent kisses.  Her hands tangled in wavy, blonde hair and pulled Elyza even closer, and she met every kiss with an open and hungry mouth.  They eventually broke away from each other, huffing and puffing, and locked impatient eyes.  A slight nod of the head was exchanged between them.

Elyza pulled up on the handle with some effort, and the door lifted open with a jerk.  Sunlight flooded the garage, the yellowy brightness instantly blinding them.  Elyza found Alicia’s hand, fingers intertwined, and they walked right into the horde of the infected…

 

And into the sunset.

 

 


End file.
